Yung Lin Should East Asia Develop A Similar Regional Integration as the EU? With the Brexit happening, the regional integration has been a hot topic again. There comes an old historically-debated topic—The regional integration comparing East Asia to European Union. However, we argue that every region should have its own way of developing regional integration. Setting up a standard model and applying it to other region is easy to neglect the region’s historical and cultural features or more so to create conflicts. Discussing the regional integration, we apply the perspective from History, Geography and Culture as these are preliminary factors of building up shared sense of identities leading toward regional integration. How Regional Integration Start in Europe? History. European Union was established in 1993; however, the integration has been in the process ever since the end of WWII. The US and the Soviet Union had been forming their bloc that European states conceive themselves rather in lower power. Organisations springing up like European Coal and Steel Community, European Atomic Energy Community and European Economic Community paved the foundation for European integration. With the conception of ‘sovereignty’ emerged earlier than European integration, the rules of European integration was rather steady for these sovereignty states. Geography. Since the fifteenth century, discovering other countries and building up the world map consolidated the European identity and the road to region integration. Inside Europe, the border issues and territory disputes took place often that necessitate European states to develop diplomacy, which provides a steady political environment for regional integration. Culture. The Europe can be defined that they descended from the similar culture as it is also related to the geographic favourable factors. Although differences can still be seen, it is the similar cultural characteristics that establish Europe themselves the identity. What is the Regional Integration like in East Asia? History. The international politics in East Asia can be defined as Tribute System (Tian-Xia 天下), which is that other countries pay tribute to China; hence, the tributary countries conceive themselves not as a country but as a tributary state. The concept of ‘sovereignty’ introduced in after WWII creates tensions in the region. The state that just come up with sovereignty still needs time to construct itself. Some argue that the West distribution of power drives East Asian countries off the road of developing the region’s identity. Geography. The word ‘East Asia’ is not constructed by East Asian countries themselves but may be defined as a word that comes from the West after the discovery of other world continents. These countries have not together constructed the geographic identity as East Asia. Culture. Due to the distance amongst East Asian countries, it creates the environment for them to respectively develop their own culture. The long-standing culture sets each culture develops its own identity not as a sovereignty state but as a similar-cultured community. Looking at East Asia from the perspective of East Asia East Asian identities construct heterogeneously in history, geography and culture. There is no natural course to develop a region’s integration. After World War II, the EU and East Asia both perceive the threat of the US and Soviet Union but this factor does not drive their regional integration to develop into the same way because as these two regions have completely different ecology of history, geography and culture. We argue that regional integration is not to shape all the state’s identities into the same way but to build up a good diplomatic regional platform for the states to respect each other’s differences and to construct together a regional institution for the goal of stability and peace. Herein, it relates to the main idea of we the NEApproach mini archive that it is through dialogue, conversation, interaction that we can continue build up understandings and construct a new point of view for East Asia. Copyright @NEApproach mini archive
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